


how to diy a home 3.4 kilometers away

by inarizaki (xixuwus)



Series: star swallowers; let’s defy the universe [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Domestic, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Post-Time Skip, side iwaatsu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:40:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28001061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xixuwus/pseuds/inarizaki
Summary: “i wanna move in with you,” oikawa says.“you can’t live with me,” hinata says. “i live in brazil and you hate that i have a schweiden adlers poster in my room.”
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou/Oikawa Tooru
Series: star swallowers; let’s defy the universe [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2007718
Comments: 10
Kudos: 163





	how to diy a home 3.4 kilometers away

**Author's Note:**

> honestly, this whole fic was made bc of the ushioi conversation and then i just built everything around it, anyways enjoy~ uwu

“i wanna move in with you,” oikawa says. 

“you can’t live with me,” hinata says. “i live in brazil and you hate that i have a schweiden adlers poster in my room.”

oikawa rolls his eyes. “well, i don’t see why you have to have that thing up there. you have their phone numbers, isn’t that enough?” 

hinata laughs like the breeze at the beach, like the echo in a valley, sundrops of pure joy. oikawa props himself up on his elbow and shifts to lay his head on hinata’s chest. “i really do want to move in with you, or you with me, one day.” 

hinata plays with oikawa’s hair, runs his fingers against his scalp. the heat of his palm is warm; oikawa could fall asleep again. “i do too, but i really don’t think we can live together.” 

oikawa pouts. “why not?”

“because i think we’ll go shopping for furniture and i’ll want a white sofa, but you’ll argue that white sofas are too hard to take care of and keep clean. you’re gonna insist on getting a blue one that’s way too soft and makes you sink down into it and is hard to get out of, and i’m obviously gonna hate it. we’re gonna argue about what kind of sink to get or the color of the countertops, and we’re gonna end up breaking up in the middle of an ikea store and leave with no food and a desk that neither of us know how to assemble.” 

oikawa is so dumbfounded that he has to laugh. “i kinda do want a blue couch,” oikawa says, leaning up to kiss hinata’s lips. “and a white couch really is too hard to clean.” 

hinata wraps his arms around oikawa’s shoulders and leans into the kiss. “see? we can’t live together. we’d kill each other.” 

oikawa sits up and throws a leg over hinata’s body, straddling his hips with his thighs. he buries his face into his neck and tries to memorize the smell of his sea breeze cologne, wonders if he should just steal the bottle and dump it onto his bed to prolong the smell. 

hinata’s plane leaves in four hours. 

* * *

oikawa doesn’t know what possesses him to think video calling wakatoshi of all people is a good idea, but wakatoshi’s face appears on his phone screen before he can end the call and he wants to kick himself.

“oikawa.” 

“ushiwaka.” 

oikawa can see kageyama’s jet black hair peeking out from the covers, messy. wakatoshi is not a messy man, so there’s obviously only one answer to why wakatoshi is shirtless and kageyama has a rat’s nest for hair. oikawa grimaces, thinks about making a crude joke, but his stomach is in knots enough as it is. 

“you’re calling at a peculiar time,” wakatoshi says, straightforward, factual. 

“yeah… i was just thinking… could we talk for a bit?”

wakatoshi is silent for a moment, motionless even, and oikawa wonders briefly if their connection got cut off. then wakatoshi sets his phone down, and oikawa hears him get out of bed. kageyama grumbles something and wakatoshi shushes him with gentle words that oikawa doesn’t catch. his heart clenches. he wishes he could punch them through the phone. wakatoshi carries their conversation out of the bedroom and into the living room where he can be a bit louder and let kageyama sleep. he’s wearing a shirt now.

“you and tobio-chan are real fucking cute, huh,” he quips, jaded.

wakatoshi grunts. “what would you like to talk about?” he asks. 

oikawa softens, hugs a pillow in his lap tight. before he can speak, wakatoshi asks, “is this about hinata?” 

oikawa’s stomach drops—found out. he laughs to cover up the nervousness in his heart. truth be told, he should’ve called iwaizumi. he always knew how to comfort oikawa and say the right things to calm him down whereas wakatoshi has always done and said everything to push his buttons. maybe it’s the fact that oikawa hasn’t had a decent sleep in a few weeks, but he wants to fly back to japan just to fuck ushijima up with a good serve. 

“have you been sleeping well?” wakatoshi says. “you look tired.” 

“way to make me feel good,” oikawa teases.

“you wouldn’t be calling me if you wanted to feel good.” 

fuck. oikawa doesn’t understand how wakatoshi could be so sharp and so dull at the same time. this is the same man who remembers oikawa’s stats from middle school but couldn’t figure out whether a door was push or pull. he hates that wakatoshi of all people can read him, a setter’s nightmare. 

“talk to me, tooru. what’s bothering you?” 

oikawa bites his bottom lip before exhaling. “do you believe in soulmates?”

“you and hinata never leave this subject alone.” 

oikawa frowns, cocks his head. “huh?”

“hinata asked the same thing before you guys started dating.” 

“huh.”

so this is who hinata asked about soulmates? oikawa had thought hinata had dismissed the soulmate talk the first time he brought it up. had it bothered him that badly? or had he just want to prove to oikawa that it wasn’t true? though, in hindsight, hinata had been the one to bring it up, to clarify his thoughts. he’s already confirmed that he asked iwaizumi about it, so who knows how many people he surveyed to get a fuller perspective on it?

“i don’t know what you guys are going through,” wakatoshi says, “but i think you guys need to be honest with each other.” 

oikawa laughs. “you think shou-chan is anything but honest?”

wakatoshi goes silent for a moment then grunts, agreeing with oikawa. 

“just answer the question,” oikawa says.

“yes and no. i believe fate plays a role in meeting a significant other, but we do not have to walk fate’s path brick by brick.”

“no, not significant other. soulmates. they don’t have to date.”

“i’m not following.” 

oikawa feels like ripping his hair out. “shouyou and tobio-chan. they’re soulmates, wouldn’t you agree? just… fundamentally.”

wakatoshi goes silent for a moment, his lips a bit tighter than usual. he can see the cogs turning in wakatoshi’s mind. he’s thinking about it, connecting the dots that oikawa’s been drawing. 

“i agree,” he mutters stubbornly. 

“no matter what, they’re going to go back to each other again and again and again.” 

“yes.” 

“does… does that bother you?” 

wakatoshi’s features melt into an earnest roundness, as if just the thought of kageyama is enough to change his entire demeanor.  ~~ is this what pure love looks like? ~~ “no,” he says. “it doesn’t.” 

oikawa frowns, furrows his brows. “why not?”

“why should it?” he fires back. “kageyama chose me.” 

that’s easy for ushijima to say with kageyama snuggled up in his bed. “you’re right. you didn’t make me feel good.”

“you should’ve called hajime if you wanted to feel good.”

“hajime? he becomes your athletic trainer for a few months and suddenly he’s hajime?”

“you should hear the things atsumu calls him.” 

oikawa is about to say something about how disgustingly sweet atsumu and iwaizumi can be, but he suddenly can’t stop staring at the lamp behind ushijima. the first time he saw it was in a photo hinata had posted online, an atrocious thing that clashed with the colors of the wall and the space of the furniture. 

he’s seen nicer lamps in the one star motels of brazil. he could design the space better. first of all, he’d get rid of that stupid blue grey color on the walls, dreary. next, that lamp has to go for something more sleek and compact. the couch would be large and comfortable, like a second bed in case he and hinata fucked there and were too lazy to move to the bed—but easy to clean! he wouldn’t want their guests to know they were fucking on the furniture. 

what does the kitchen look like? from the sparse pictures tobio has on his social media, it’s small and compact, as japanese kitchens are wont to be. everything has its proper place, and the design is minimal. oikawa’s frankly a little surprised that ushijima and kageyama have such a modern looking kitchen considering the people they are. 

he and hinata would have a modern kitchen, something easy to clean but big. oikawa wants a big kitchen so he can have room to flip eggs to impress hinata or sit on the counter while hinata makes him omurice for breakfast, ogling at how he sautées the rice so perfectly with the demiglace and then immediately clown him for getting egg shell in the mixture. 

and best of all, that ugly lamp wouldn’t be there. 

but that’s not truly what oikawa wants, right? he wants high mountains and deep valleys. he wants to play volleyball with the team he grew up admiring. he wants to drink foreign beers and learn how to roll his r’s properly. and he’s sure hinata wants the brazilian beachline and his friends he grew close to while kicking up the sand, wants to wear red at the olympics for as many years as he can, wants to play next to his fated setter for the rest of his life. 

why can’t he have both? why can’t he have hinata on his couch— _ his  _ couch,  _ their  _ couch—to hold and watch stupid action movies with the wrong subtitles or cooking his crunchy eggs in the morning while he wore his stupid blue jersey? 

because hinata can’t be in two places at once. 

“oikawa... are you crying?” 

oikawa panics for a moment, wipes at his cheeks and realizes that it’s dry. his eyes feel moist, but his cheeks are dry. 

“yeah,” he says. “i’m crying because your lamp is so fucking ugly.” 

ushijima pauses, turns around to look at the lamp oikawa is talking about and then turns back around. 

“that was a gift from kageyama’s sister.” 

oikawa hates it even more.

* * *

at 3:45 am in tokyo, iwaizumi gets a message from oikawa:

> _ YOU LET USHIWAKA CALL YOU HAJIME?!  _

iwaizumi flips his phone over and goes back to sleep. 

* * *

every week, oikawa sends different catalog items from ikea to hinata—a desk here, a chair there, maybe a wardrobe, or even a weird table. he’s gone through every single cutlery and rated them on a scale of 1 to 10 on aesthetics with a long one-sided debate about whether or not they should get metal silverware or wooden ones. 

halfway through oikawa’s explanation why he wants an L-shaped couch over the phone, hinata says, “oikawa-san, i think you’re getting ahead of yourself.” 

oikawa freezes. “i mean… i’m just talking about what kind of couch would be nice,” he mutters.

“you sent me links for dining tables yesterday,” hinata says. “and bedframes last week. you know i live in brazil, right?”

oikawa frowns and glares at hinata as he sits up, adjusting his grip on his phone. “yes, i know where you live. i’m not stupid. i know you live in brazil, and i live in argentina.” 

“okay, good. i just think you should stop thinking about this. stop… stop looking at furniture catalogs and stop trying to decorate a house that doesn’t exist in either of our countries.” 

oikawa’s face flushes red, either from embarrassment or anger. hinata hides his face in the collar of his hoodie, tying the strings tight; he’s clearly embarrassed as well. if oikawa was younger and a little more selfish, he’d yell at hinata, accuse him of not loving oikawa as much or lying about wanting to live together (not that hinata has ever mentioned living with him actually; it’s always been oikawa), but oikawa is older and more mature; however, he is still very selfish. 

“don’t beat around the bush, shouyou. if you don’t want to be near me, just say so, alright?” he snaps. 

“oikawa-san, that’s not what i meant,” hinata mutters, head in his hands. 

“i understood what you meant.” 

“did you?” 

there’s hundreds of miles between them, and hinata’s words make it feel like thousands. suddenly they’re argentina and japan again; they’re odd-hour calls and voicemail tag; they’re shifty eyes avoiding each other from across the room. oikawa wants too much, and hinata is bottlenecking his domestic fantasies. 

there’s a long silence. clearly, neither of them want to continue talking about furniture. 

“i’m going to california next week,” oikawa says. “i won’t have cell service.” 

a glint of somber amber flashes across hinata’s eyes for a second as he looks down. he snuggles into his hoodie, and oikawa notices it’s his old hoodie he got on his trip to miami a while ago. he had left it behind for hinata because he said it was soft. oikawa’s heart stirs and softens like room temperature butter. suddenly he wishes he hadn’t yelled. 

“have fun in california,” hinata says. “say hi to iwaizumi-san for me. good night.” 

oikawa grips his phone tight, can’t bring himself to smile when that somber amber is still stuck in hinata’s irises. “good night, shou-chan. i love you.” 

hinata blows a kiss through the screen. “i love you too.” 

* * *

the first thing oikawa does when he sees iwaizumi is punch him in the shoulder. 

“i pick you up from the airport, and this is the thanks i get?” iwaizumi mutters, rubbing his arm as he pulls out of the airport. 

“i should punch you twice. i didn’t think you’d bring that one.” he points to atsumu in the backseat. 

“ _ you’re  _ the one crashing  _ our  _ vacation!” atsumu yells, sitting up and leaning forward in his seat to be closer to the conversation. 

it occurs to oikawa that he could have invited hinata on this trip, and it would’ve been a double date of sorts. his chest tightens as atsumu presses himself against the back of iwaizumi’s seat, whining like a bored puppy. his hand rests on the center console, and oikawa doesn’t miss the way iwaizumi reaches over to hold his hand for a brief moment. 

“you’re both so gross,” oikawa gags, glaring out the window. 

iwaizumi laughs. “so do you wanna go eat first or go shopping first? atsumu and i wanna stop by ikea. the one they have here is huge, and we’re looking to get a new dining table.” 

oikawa’s heart wails. “whatever’s fine.” 

* * *

when oikawa gets home from california, there’s a huge, flat package at his door. there’s a note on it that says:

> _ call me when you get this! - shouyou~  _

oikawa drags the box into his apartment and sets it on the floor. he grabs his laptop and sits on the floor with it as well, scrunching his nose as he calls hinata. he picks up on the first ring.

“hi, oikawa-san~ how was california?” he says, face bright and cheery. has he been waiting for his call? 

“shouyou, what’s with this big package? it said to call you,” he says, tapping the box next to him. 

“oh! you haven’t opened it yet, right? hold on—” hinata sets his laptop on the coffee table and angles the camera, his tongue poking out as he adjusts it. he runs off screen and oikawa notices that he’s wearing a pair of boxers he’d left in brazil. he smiles at the thought, his mind starting to wander to the beaches, but he reels them in quickly. beaches make him think of brazil, makes him think of hinata, makes him think of his bed, makes him think of houses, and so on—a vicious cycle of idealized domesticity that they don’t want to talk about quite yet. 

hinata comes back into frame hauling a similar big box. he sets it on the ground before running back to the laptop, bringing it closer and angling the camera properly this time now that there’s something to focus on. he brings the box into his lap, scissors in hand. 

“let’s open them together,” he says.

oikawa cocks his head to the side, glares at hinata through the screen with a dumb expression. blame it on the jet lag but he feels like there’s definitely something here that oikawa’s not getting. 

“can’t you just tell me what this is?” he asks, looking over at the box and playing with a stray piece of cardboard that got torn off in the delivery. 

“i’ll tell you once you open it. come on, it has significance.” 

oikawa huffs and stands up. “get me a second to find scissors,” he mutters. he comes back with a knife after unsuccessful in finding his scissors. he sits down and starts cutting open the box, hinata on the other line doing the same, but his eyes are glued to oikawa. he opens the package and finds a bag of screw and long boards of wood.

“shouyou, what is this?” he says, finding the instruction set and flipping through trying to find the japanese instructions. 

“it’s a desk!” hinata exclaims, holding up an identical board through the camera. 

oikawa raises an eyebrow inquisitively. “two desks?” 

“yeah, one for me and one for you.” 

oikawa runs a hand through his hair, still trying to wrap his head around this situation. “shouyou, what is this? what is it for?” 

hinata’s smile falters slightly, the way a sunny day suddenly turns grey and overcast; it’s still bright and warm, but the clouds are threatening to spill. 

“i was harsh the other day,” he confesses, the plank of wood on his lap, his arms over top of it. “i was harsh when i said we shouldn’t talk about building a house together and things like that. i shouldn’t have said that, and i kept thinking about that while you were on vacation. we can’t build a house together right now—”

“shouyou—” 

“—but we can start making the places we have feel like one house, right? and i thought it would be a nice virtual date idea to build a desk together—”

“shouyou, stop talking.” 

“—because i noticed you keep throwing your stuff onto the floor, and i really hate it, so i wanted to give you a desk to put on that empty wall you have.” 

“shou-chan, please…” 

hinata finally stops, his lower lip worried between his teeth as he stares at oikawa. oikawa’s chest swells, his stomach and rib cage hot as he processes the planks of wood at his side. it’s an apology at the least; it’s a promise at the most. 

but for right now, it’s a desk that they get to share in their homes, the beginnings of something they can have together. 

“do you hate it?” hinata asks. 

oikawa’s cheeks turn red, tears brimming at his waterline. “you’re so mean, shou-chan—always make me cry,” he hiccups, pressing the heels of his palm to his eyes.

“oikawa-san, i’m sorry. what should i do? don’t cry—i’ll return it if you want.” 

oikawa scrunches his nose and hugs the wood. “no! you idiot, it’s my desk! our desk! i love it.” 

hinata’s smile returns, the sun shooing away the clouds. it’s golden and bright, and oikawa knows hinata is even more radiant on the other side of the screen. pixels could only render so much of his beauty. 

“so do you wanna build it together?” 

oikawa wipes his tears away and nods. “yeah, yeah, let me grab a screwdriver or something. i don’t even know if i have one.” he runs to the kitchen and rummages around to find tools, grateful that thiago left his toolbag at his place.

“hey, oikawa-san, the instructions are pretty easy, so i thought we could play a game with this,” hinata says.

“hm? what’s your idea?”

“we give each other the instructions, but you give it to me in spanish, and i’ll give it to you in portugese.” 

oikawa laughs.  _ “perfecto, mi amor.”  _

**Author's Note:**

> find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/xixuwus)


End file.
